Blood charms are almost exclusively the domain of the Daoine Sidhe, which didn’t explain how someone had been able to replicate the Tuatha door-opening power with one—unless they’d used Chelsea’s blood in the mix, which would also explain why her magic seemed to be spread unevenly around the room. Whoever had her wasn’t above bleeding her.
Tybalt breathed out slowly. Then he nodded. “For her sake, I am glad. Cait Sidhe justice can be cruel,” he said. “For mine…I am troubled.”
“Yeah,” I said quietly. “If it wasn’t her, who was it?”
We stood in that flame-blackened room, looking at each other. Someone had snatched Chelsea. Someone was pursuing her, for reasons we still didn’t know. And whoever it was, they were able to follow her into the Court of Cats, and they didn’t care who got hurt.
ELEVEN
WE STEPPED FROM THE SHADOWS onto the hard-packed earth edging the creek that runs through the heart of the UC Berkeley campus. The creek’s small footbridge shielded us from mortal eyes; between that and the hanging ivy threatening to block the sun, we could practically have pitched a tent and had a cookout down there.
“I should go.”
“I wish you didn’t have to.” I turned to Tybalt. He was standing in the deepest part of the shadow. I could still see the bruise on his cheek and the exhaustion in his slumping shoulders. “Are you sure you don’t want a cup of coffee or something?”
“Your love of artificial stimulants will be the death of you one day,” he said, a smile turning up the corners of his lips. “I must attend to my Court, and you must attend to matters here. I will find you when I have the freedom to do so.”
“Okay,” I said reluctantly. The smell of pennyroyal and musk rose as he opened the door onto the Shadow Roads, and he was gone, leaving me alone.
If any of the students who saw me emerge from beneath the bridge thought it was strange, they kept their thoughts to themselves. This was UC Berkeley. Strange women in leather jackets with ash-stained hands probably crawled out from under their bridges all the time. The student body continued about its business, and I continued on mine.
Even if Walther didn’t have anything useful for me yet, he had my squire, and I wanted him back. Quentin was a smart kid, and that extended to going where I told him to go, as long as he didn’t think I was trying to be heroic and self-sacrificing. “Walther had
As a junior faculty member, Walther barely rated an office. He didn’t rate one that was easy to find. It was located in a maze of twisting hallways that seemed to have been designed by an architect who dreamed of one day having a real Minotaur lurking to devour the unwary. No legendary Greek monsters leaped out to grab me as I walked, finally stopping in the open doorway of a small, cluttered room that held two legendary monsters of its own. I rapped my knuckles against the doorframe.
“If one of you doesn’t have coffee for me, I’m going to be cranky,” I announced.
Walther and Quentin had been bent over something on the counter. They straightened and turned at the sound of my voice. Walther smiled. Quentin didn’t bother with the preliminaries. He grabbed a paper cup and trotted over to me, holding it at arm’s length.
“Here,” he said. “Coffee.”
“And thus am I reminded why I allow you to live,” I said. The coffee was cold and the “creamer” had never seen the inside of a cow, but I didn’t care. The caffeine was all I needed. I lowered the cup after chugging a third of its contents, asking, “What’s our status?”
“Come in, come in,” said Walther, beckoning me forward. “And close the door.” His glasses were askew, and his hair was mussed. Not enough that anyone who didn’t know him would notice, but Walther worked very hard to maintain his superficial “I am the perfect professor” appearance. Mussed hair didn’t go with that ideal.
“Long night?” I asked, doing as I was bid. The office was considerably dimmer once the light from the hall was blocked. All the overheads were off, leaving us in a room that would have been substantially too gloomy for mortal eyes.
Good thing none of us had mortal eyes. I sipped my coffee as I walked across the room, drinking more slowly now that the first rush of caffeine was in my system. With the ambient light blocked by the door, it was apparent that whatever Walther was working on was glowing faintly, like a light stick the morning after Halloween. It was a steady glow, at least, and not a candlelight flicker. I hate candles.
“I was already here when you called, tinkering with some personal projects. You just focused me,” said Walther. He turned back to the counter. “I’m not technically supposed to be here today, but I knew no one else was using my office, so I just kept going.”
“He took a break for breakfast,” said Quentin helpfully.
“I bet he did.” By the time Quentin got to campus, he was probably so focused on food that he could have convinced an invading army to stop long enough to get some oatmeal and bacon. Teenage boys are good that way. “Is it safe to assume we’re all standing here in the dark because you managed to make something we could use?”
“I wouldn’t use the word ‘safe’ when talking about this stuff, but yes.” Walther picked up a beaker with excruciating care. He was wearing heavy gloves, and he still looked uncomfortable holding the thing. It was half-full of a viscous liquid glowing a soft, somehow menacing shade of orange. I looked at it and had absolutely no desire to get any closer.
Too bad I was going to have to get closer—a lot closer—if I wanted the stuff to be of any use. “Is this the power dampener?” He nodded. “Tell me about it.”
“For a start, do not ingest. The only way this could be more toxic is if I milked a rattlesnake into it to add a little extra zing.” Walther put the beaker down, looking relieved when it was safely on the counter. “It’s meant for topical application. Skin contact triggers its effects.”
“Which are…?” I prompted
“It blocks all access to higher magic for a year and a day. No illusions, transformations, blood workings, anything. I’m not sure what would happen if you spilled it on a shapeshifter, so let’s try not to find out.” Walther grimaced. “If there’s a counter for the stuff, I haven’t been able to find it. It takes about twenty minutes for the effects to stabilize, but they’ll kick in almost immediately.” He picked up another beaker. This one was filled with pale green liquid that didn’t glow at all. “Scrub off all traces of the potion with this and you should be fine—stress on
“Got it. At least there’s a window.” I eyed the open beakers. “Is there any way you can decant those into something we can carry without worrying about spilling things on ourselves every time we hit a pothole?”
“I was working on that when you showed up.” Walther traded beakers again, waving me and Quentin back. He didn’t have to tell us twice. We stepped clear before he began pouring the glowing liquid into a set of thin-lipped glass jars. “This isn’t the most stable thing in the world.”
“Is it going to explode?”
“No, but it may modify its own properties if you wait too long to use it.”
That didn’t sound good. “Modify how?”
“Maybe it’ll stop working. Maybe it’ll turn permanent. I have no way of telling. Alchemy is half science, half magic—and when it’s something like this,
“This becomes a more and more exciting adventure.” I finished my coffee, setting the empty cup down on the nearest desk before saying, offhandedly, “Someone tried to flood the Court of Cats with lava. Chelsea was there,
